Phonebooks Are Bullshit

*The Bullshit Series started on an older blog but I wanted to bring these articles back here, as I have new installments for the series that I want to release over time. The series focuses on things that I think are bullshit… like filet mignon, Zubaz pants, the Pro Bowl and diets.

*Written in 2015.

Look at that pile of crap in the photo; I just want to shit on it and burn it.

Why the hatred for phonebooks? Let me elaborate.

Phonebooks, in this day and age are fucking stupid. Their continued existence is evidence that there is something fundamentally wrong with humankind. Seriously, what exactly makes these things necessary in the modern world?

This little diatribe by yours truly, has been inspired by repeated events out of my control that annoy the piss out of me.

I’m sick of coming home from a long day of work and finding a big ass brick of yellow paper in a cardboard cover wrapped in a plastic bag blocking my path into my house once every few months. Yes, every few months, because one phonebook isn’t enough. No, these asshole have to either print updates all the time or there are multiple companies forcing these goddamned things on me like a pushy drug dealer trying to force angeldust on school kids.

How do I respond to this? Usually I punt the goddamned thing into the bushes like I’m Morten Fucking Anderson in an NFC Championship game! Why? Because I don’t want it, it is forced on me and I don’t want to be responsible for disposing of it or worse yet, having to keep a library of these asshole things! I didn’t sign up for these, I didn’t agree to anything and I don’t want them. Phonebooks are like the mailman hoarding all your junk mail for months and then dumping it all on your doorstep at once.

The thing is, who the fuck still uses a phonebook? In the modern era of smartphones and motherfucking Google, finding phone numbers and info on local businesses is much easier, much quicker and it all fits within something smaller than the size of your hand. A phonebook isn’t this convenient, as it’s like a stack of bibles had a big doofus baby that weighs more than Andre the Giant’s left thigh.

Can a phonebook give you more than a phone number? Not really. With my phone, my tablet or my computer, I can search any local business, get the phone number, get a map with solid directions, get a street view shot of what the building looks like and read reviews of the business. Also on my phone, I can just tap on the phone number in my search and it will magically call the business. If you tap the phone number in a phonebook, nothing will happen other than you looking like an idiot. Another plus with your phone, tablet or computer, is that searches for businesses often time pull up lists of services, prices and in the case of restaurants, menus.

Now phonebooks also offer lists of services, prices and menus but that is because they are ads bought by local businesses. You see, they don’t offer all the information, just the info of those willing to pay and have it included in the phonebook. Why would you want some info and not all info? And this is really why phonebooks still exist: advertising dollars. But I get it, it is a business and that’s fine. I just don’t understand how some businesses still pump money into such an archaic and dead form of advertising.

I hope they at least make all of these out of recycled paper now. These things are like 100,000 pages thick and waste a shit ton of paper for something that no one even looks at. In my neighborhood alone, there are about 200 condo units. With these things popping up on my doorstep and everyone else’s, there are probably around 1,000 big ass phonebooks per year! That’s just in my neighborhood, not the whole town, the whole county, the whole state, the whole country or the whole world.

This brings me to the disposal of these things. They are forced on me and everyone else and then we are expected to take them to special phonebook recycling dumpsters when they are outdated. So I am expected to be inconvenienced in that regard too – rounding these heavy bastards up and wasting gas going to wherever the magic phonebook dumpster is. The truth is, the whole concept is outdated and should be trashed.

Times have changed. There is no good that can come out of producing phonebooks these days. They don’t even make good rolling papers.

Like this:

Related

Post navigation

One thought on “Phonebooks Are Bullshit”

They have finally gotten rid of these here in the UK for the most part within the past few years. I am all for being “retro”, having hard copies of things and old-school methods but phone books do indeed have no place at all in the modern world. Sometimes we get printed business guides through the letterbox and these are okay as they advertise local businesses and services that you may not always know existed. But even the companies behind the phonebooks have their online directories for businesses to advertise in, leave reviews etc. and I’m surprised that they allowed the physical books to linger on for so long, gradually getting thinner and thinner until disappearing for good.